In Search of Lost Time (55 page)

– Did you see what that young woman did, Princesse? said Général de Froberville to the Princesse des Laumes, whom he had come up to greet and whom Mme de Saint-Euverte had left for a moment. Odd, wasn't it? Is she a performer?

– No, she's just some young Mme de Cambremer, answered the Princesse without thinking and then added hurriedly: I'm only repeating what I heard, I haven't the slightest idea who she is; someone behind me was saying they were country neighbours of Mme de Saint-Euverte, but I don't think anyone knows them, really. They must be ‘country folk'! Anyway, I don't know if you're intimate with the brilliant society here, but I can't put a name to any of these astonishing people. What do you think they spend their time doing when they're not at Mme de Saint-Euverte's evenings? She must have ordered them along with the musicians, the chairs and the refreshments. You must admit these ‘guests from Belloir's'
⁹⁸
are magnificent. Does she really have the heart to rent the same ‘extras' every week? It isn't possible!

– Ah! But Cambremer is quite a good name, and an old one too, said the Général.

– I see no harm in the fact that it's old, answered the Princesse drily, but still, it's not
euphonious
, she added, isolating the word euphonious as though between quotation marks, a little affectation in delivery that was peculiar to the Guermantes set.

– You think so? She's pretty enough to eat, though, said the Général, who had not let Mme de Cambremer out of his sight. Don't you agree, Princesse?

– She thrusts herself forward too much, I think; in so young a woman, that's not nice – because I don't believe she's of my generation, answered Mme des Laumes (this expression being common to both the Gallardons and the Guermantes).

But then the Princesse, seeing that M. de Froberville was continuing to gaze at Mme de Cambremer, added half out of spite against her, half out of friendliness towards the Général: ‘Not nice… for her husband! I'm sorry I don't know her, since you've set your heart on her; I would have introduced you,' she continued, although she probably would have done nothing of the kind if she had known the young woman. ‘I will have to say goodnight to you, because it's the birthday of a friend of mine and I must go and pay my respects, she said in a tone of modest sincerity, reducing the fashionable party to which she was going to the simplicity of a ceremony which was tiresome but which it was obligatory and also rather touching to attend. Besides, I'm supposed to meet Basin there; while I've been here, he has been seeing friends of his – people you know, I believe. They who have the same name as a bridge: the Iénas.'

– It was the name of a victory before it was a bridge, Princesse, said the Général. What do you expect – an old trooper like me, he went on, removing his monocle and wiping it, as he would have changed a bandage, while the Princesse instinctively looked away. That Empire nobility, it's different of course, but really, for what it is, it's very fine of its kind. They were people who, when all is said and done, fought like heroes.

– But I have the deepest respect for heroes, said the Princesse, in a slightly ironic tone: if I don't go with Basin to see this woman, the Princesse d'Iéna, it's not because of that, not at all, it's quite simply because I don't know them. Basin knows them, he loves them dearly. Oh no, it's not what you may think, they're not having an affair, I have no reason to object! Anyway, what use is it when I do try to object? she added in a melancholy voice, because everyone knew that the very day after the Prince des Laumes married his ravishing cousin, he had deceived her, and he had not stopped deceiving her since. But this is not the same, these are people he used to know, he's happy as a pig in clover, I think it's very nice. But I can tell you that even what
he has told me about their house… Can you imagine, all their furniture is ‘Empire'!
⁹⁹

– Well, naturally, Princesse; it was their grandparents' furniture.

– Well, I'm not saying it wasn't, but it's no less ugly for all that. I understand perfectly well that one can't always have pretty things, but at least one's things should not be ridiculous. What do you expect? I can't think of anything more conventional, more bourgeois, than that horrible style – cabinets with swans' heads like bathtubs.

– Actually I do believe they have some beautiful things, they must have that famous mosaic table that was used for the signing of the Treaty of…

– Oh, I'm not saying they don't have things that are interesting from a historical point of view. But things like that can't ever be beautiful… because they're simply horrible! I've got things like that myself which Basin inherited from the Montesquious. Only they're in the attics of Guermantes where no one can see them. Anyway, really, that's not the point, I would rush around to their house with Basin, I would see them even in the midst of their sphinxes and their brass if I knew them, but… I don't know them! I was always told when I was little that it wasn't polite to go to the homes of people one didn't know, she said, assuming a childish tone. So I'm just doing what I was taught. Can't you see those good people if someone they didn't know were to come bursting into the house? They might make me feel quite unwelcome! said the Princesse.

And she coquettishly enhanced the smile which this supposition had brought to her lips by giving her blue eyes, which were fixed on the General, a dreamy, gentle expression.

– Ah, Princesse, you know very well they wouldn't be able to contain themselves for joy…

– Not at all. Why? she asked him with the utmost vivacity, either so as not to seem to know that it was because she was one of the foremost ladies in France, or so as to have the pleasure of hearing the General say it. Why? What do you know about it? It might be the most disagreeable thing in the world for them. I don't know, but judging by myself, it already bores me so much to see the people I know, I believe that if I had to see people I didn't know, even if they
had ‘fought like heroes', I would go mad. Besides, you see, except when it's an old friend like you whom one knows quite apart from that, I don't know if heroism would take one very far in society. I often find it quite boring enough as it is to give a dinner-party, but if I had to offer my arm to Spartacus going in to the table… No, really, Vercingétorix would never be the one I would send for, to make a fourteenth. I think I would save him for the large parties. And since I don't give any…

– Ah, Princesse, you're not a Guermantes for nothing. You have your share of it all right, the wit of the Guermantes family!

– They always say ‘the wit of the Guermantes
family
'. I've never been able to understand why. Do you know
other
Guermantes who have it? she added in a bubbly, joyful burst of laughter, her features concentrated, interconnected in a network of animation, her eyes sparkling, blazing with a radiant sunshine of gaiety that could be kindled only by remarks, even if made by the Princesse herself, in praise of her wit or her beauty. Wait, there's Swann. He seems to be speaking to your young Cambremer. There… he's next to old mother Saint-Euverte, don't you see him? Ask him to introduce you. But hurry up, he's trying to walk away!

– How frightfully ill he's looking – did you notice? said the General.

– My dear Charles! Ah! At last he's coming, I was beginning to think he didn't want to see me!

Swann liked the Princesse des Laumes very much, and also the sight of her reminded him of Guermantes, the estate next to Combray, the whole countryside which he loved so much and had ceased to visit so as not to be away from Odette. Using the half-artistic, half-courtly formulae which he knew were pleasing to the Princesse and which he resumed quite naturally as soon as he reimmersed himself for a moment in his old social milieu – and wanting anyway for his own sake to express the yearning he felt for the country:

– Ah, he said to some vague general audience, in order to be heard both by Mme de Saint-Euverte, to whom he was speaking, and by Mme des Laumes, for whom he was speaking, here's the charming Princesse! See, she has come up from Guermantes expressly to hear Liszt's
Saint Francis of Assisi
and has only just had time, like a pretty
titmouse, to go and pluck a little fruit from the wild plums and hawthorns and put them on her head; there is even a bit of dew on them still, a bit of the hoarfrost that must be making the duchess groan so. It's very pretty indeed, my dear Princesse.

– What, the Princesse has come up expressly from Guermantes? But that's too much! I didn't know, I'm embarrassed, exclaimed Mme de Saint-Euverte naïvely, not being used to Swann's wit. Then, looking more closely at the Princesse's headgear: Why you're quite right, it's meant to look like… what shall I say, not chestnuts, no – oh what a ravishing idea! But how could the Princesse have known what was going to be on my programme! The musicians didn't even tell me.

Swann, who was accustomed, when he was in the company of a woman whom he had kept up the habit of addressing in gallant language, to say things so delicately nuanced that many society people could not understand them, did not condescend to explain to Mme de Saint-Euverte that he had merely been speaking metaphorically. As for the Princesse, she began laughing heartily, because Swann's wit was highly appreciated in her set and also because she could not hear a compliment addressed to her without finding it most exquisitely subtle and irresistibly droll.

– Well! I'm delighted, Charles, if you like my little hawthorn fruits. Why did you speak to that Cambremer woman? Are you her neighbour in the country too?

Mme de Saint-Euverte, seeing that the Princesse appeared happy to chat with Swann, had moved off.

– But you are too, Princesse.

– I! But then those people have country places everywhere! How I would like to be in their place!

– It's not the Cambremers, it's her own family; she's a Legrandin daughter and used to come to Combray. I don't know if you know you're the Comtesse de Combray and the chapter owes you a due?

– I don't know what the chapter owes me, but I know that I'm dunned a hundred francs every year by the curé, which I could do without. Really these Cambremers have a most astonishing name.
¹⁰⁰
It ends just in time, but it ends badly! she said, laughing.

– It doesn't begin any better, Swann answered.

– Really, the two abbreviations together!…

– Someone very angry and very proper didn't dare finish the first word.

– But since he couldn't stop himself from beginning the second, he should have finished the first – then he'd be done with it once and for all. Our jokes are in charming taste, my little Charles, but how tiresome it is not to see you any more, she added in a caressing tone, I so much like talking to you. Just think, I wouldn't even have been able to make that idiot Froberville understand that the name Cambremer is astonishing. Admit that life is a dreadful thing. It's only when I see you that I stop feeling bored.

This was probably not true. But Swann and the Princesse had the same way of looking at the small things of life, the effect of which – unless it was the cause – was a great similarity in their ways of expressing themselves and even in their pronunciation. No one noticed the resemblance because their two voices were so utterly unlike. But if in one's imagination one managed to divest Swann's remarks of the sonority in which they were enveloped, of the moustache from under which they issued, one realized that these were the same sentences, the same inflections, that these turns of phrase belonged to the Guermantes set. When it came to the important things, Swann and the Princesse did not have the same ideas about anything. But now that Swann had become so sad, always in the sort of tremulous condition that precedes the moment one is going to cry, he felt as compelled to talk about grief as a murderer is to talk about his crime. When he heard the Princesse say that life was a dreadful thing, he felt as comforted as if she had been talking about Odette.

– Oh, yes! Life is a dreadful thing. We must see each other soon, my dear friend. What's so nice about being with you is that you're not cheerful. We could spend an evening together.

– What a good idea! Why don't you come down to Guermantes? My mother-in-law would be wild with joy. It's supposed to be so ugly thereabouts, but I must say I don't dislike that countryside at all; I have a horror of ‘picturesque' spots.

– I agree, it's wonderful, answered Swann, it's almost too beautiful, too alive for me just now; it's a place to be happy in. Perhaps it's
because I've lived there, but the things there speak to me so! As soon as a breath of wind comes up, when the wheat begins to move, it seems to me that someone is about to arrive, I'm going to hear some news; and those little houses by the edge of the water… I would be quite miserable!

– Oh, my dear Charles, watch out, there's that dreadful Rampillon woman. She's seen me; please hide me. Remind me what it was that happened to her; I'm getting it all mixed up; she's just married off her daughter, or her lover, I can't remember which; maybe both of them… and to each other!… Oh no! I remember now, she's been dropped by her prince… Pretend to be talking to me, so that Bérénice woman won't come over and invite me to dinner. Anyway, I must fly. Listen, my dear Charles, now that I've seen you for once, won't you let me steal you away and take you to the Princesse's? She'd be so pleased to see you, and Basin, too – he's meeting me there. If we didn't get news of you from Mémé… Just think, I never see you at all now!

Swann declined; having told M. de Charlus that when he left Mme de Saint-Euverte's he would go directly back home, he did not want to run the risk, by going on to the Princess of Parma's, of missing a note that he had been hoping all evening would be handed to him by a servant during the party, and that perhaps he would find in his concierge's keeping. ‘Poor Swann, said Mme des Laumes that night to her husband, he's always kind, but he appears quite unhappy. You'll see, because he has promised to come to dinner one of these days. I do find it absurd that a man of his intelligence should suffer over a person of that sort, who isn't even interesting – because they say she's an idiot,' she added with the wisdom of people not in love who believe a man of sense should be unhappy only over a person who is worth it; which is rather like being surprised that anyone should condescend to suffer from cholera because of so small a creature as the comma bacillus.